Share Brand Guidelines with a Designer

By Melon Cut ·

The first message to a new designer often decides how many rounds of changes follow. If you share brand guidelines with a designer clearly, the first draft lands close to what you wanted. If you send a logo and "you know, our style", expect guessing. Here is what to send, what to say, and what to ask back.

Send a link, not a pile of attachments

Email attachments go out of date the moment you change a color. A single link that always shows the current version is better. Everything the designer needs should be reachable from it: logos, colors, fonts, voice, and the rules for using them.

What the designer must be able to find

Before you send, open your guidelines as a stranger would and check for:

  • Logo files in every version, with the rules on when to use each.
  • Colors as codes, with roles.
  • Fonts, with a note on where to get them and what the license allows.
  • Imagery notes: the kind of photos, light and mood that fit.
  • Voice, if the designer will write any text.
  • Assets: product photos, icons, approved pictures.
  • History: which older logos and colors are retired.

The last point saves designers from copying something off your old website.

Write a short cover note

The guidelines say how the brand looks. The note says what you need now. Keep it to a few lines:

Hi Sam, brand guidelines are at the link below. We need three Instagram stories for our spring opening (9:16). The audience is local families. Please keep to the guidelines, and tell me early if something in them gets in the way. Draft by Thursday.

Include the format, the audience, the deadline and the purpose. Mention what has already been tried and rejected.

Tell them where the rules can bend

Every set of guidelines has places where flexibility is fine and places where it is not. Say which is which. "The logo placement is fixed, the imagery can be more adventurous this time."

Ask for the right things back

  • Source files you can edit later.
  • Final files in the sizes you need: post 4:5 (1080 x 1350), story 9:16 (1080 x 1920), square 1:1 (1080 x 1080).
  • A list of any fonts or images used, with their licenses.
  • A note of anything they would change in the guidelines.

That last item is valuable. A fresh pair of eyes finds gaps you stopped seeing years ago.

Public or private?

If you do not want the guidelines visible to everyone, a private link keeps them to the people you send it to. For the full picture, read Public or Private Brand Guidelines.

Use AI for rough drafts, not final judgment

You can also generate quick visual ideas yourself before the designer starts, and attach them as references.

Create a rough layout idea for a spring opening story: a shopfront with flowers and bunting, warm morning light, space at the top for a headline.

Tell the designer these are sketches, not the brief. Check any text in them.

In Melon Cut

A brand in Melon Cut Guidelines starts on Free: private, opened only from its own link. Send that link, and the designer sees logos, colors, fonts, voice and usage in one place. You can also try ideas in Melon Cut Design with the brand named by @.

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